Recently, there is greater recognition and increased attempts to protect the rights of irregular workers within Korea and Japan, especially in Korea. This is because of more and more public awareness of the polarizati...Recently, there is greater recognition and increased attempts to protect the rights of irregular workers within Korea and Japan, especially in Korea. This is because of more and more public awareness of the polarization in material conditions between regular workers and irregular workers. So, this study focuses on the main factors explaining awareness of irregular worker issues of each of the classes, and relationship between class consciousness in both countries. The result shows that among factors affecting awareness of irregular work issues, negative effect of subjective employment stability was significant in both countries. In regard of anti-flexibility, while strong class effect was observed in Korea, negative effect of anti-neoliberalism was observed in Japan. This is seemingly contradictory that who opposes neoliberal economic policies agrees with labor market flexibilisation. This phenomenon could be explained by labor market characteristics in Korea and Japan. Japanese labor market is characterized by low flexibility and strong segmentation, while Korean labor market is characterized by high flexibility and strong segmentation. Interaction of these two characteristics increases the labor market inequality in Korea.展开更多
文摘Recently, there is greater recognition and increased attempts to protect the rights of irregular workers within Korea and Japan, especially in Korea. This is because of more and more public awareness of the polarization in material conditions between regular workers and irregular workers. So, this study focuses on the main factors explaining awareness of irregular worker issues of each of the classes, and relationship between class consciousness in both countries. The result shows that among factors affecting awareness of irregular work issues, negative effect of subjective employment stability was significant in both countries. In regard of anti-flexibility, while strong class effect was observed in Korea, negative effect of anti-neoliberalism was observed in Japan. This is seemingly contradictory that who opposes neoliberal economic policies agrees with labor market flexibilisation. This phenomenon could be explained by labor market characteristics in Korea and Japan. Japanese labor market is characterized by low flexibility and strong segmentation, while Korean labor market is characterized by high flexibility and strong segmentation. Interaction of these two characteristics increases the labor market inequality in Korea.
